So, everyone's mothers has a certain story they LOVE to tell at precicisly the wrong moment...like when the man of your dreams is meeting them for the first time or something. Momma Mags actually has a few that she inappropriately loves to spill, but the 1 that follows seems to be her fav. Let me first set the stage. If the story is going to be told, it must be done right...
I was and always will be, the girl who takes care of people. From very early on, I was a care giver and often found myself protecting my girl friends against mean, evil boys who wanted to give them cooties. I was never the girl being chased. In any case-this usually put me in the middle of the elementary school "boy-meets-girl" phase.
Every summer before my parents got a pool, we'd go to the lake that was in my town. We'd spend hours there, baking in the sun, eating plums and burying my little sister in the sand. This part of the story is wonderful.
What makes it not so wonderful were: 1. The mean girls who always made fun of me and my friends and 2. The smelly boys who wanted to kiss them.
1 summer though, my best friend's older cousin came to visit from Oklahoma. She was tall, blond and Beautiful. (With a capital B) Her name was Camille...how wonderful and exotic she was to us in small town USA. In any case, we took her to the lake. When she took off her shorts and tee shirt and reveled her boy cut yellow bikini, the whole beach seemed to stare at us. This included Juge.
Yes, that's really his name. Juge. Jooge, if you will.
Juge was & I am sure still is, a bad boy. He rode his Huffy bike on the road to the lake all by himself b/c his parents either didn't exist or didn't care. His tee shirts had the sleeves ripped off of them, & his hair was almost always too long. He used the "F" word regularly & talked about "cherries" a lot. In short-he wasn't someone I wanted any of the people I knew to talk to.
The lake was sectioned off with a string of booies to keep the swimmers in a certain area. If you could swim all the way out, you were considered cool. It was like, being able to sit in the back seat of the school bus. Way cool. Amy, Camille and I swam out to show that we belonged to that group.
**This is where Momma Mags starts HER version of this story**Juge followed us. He swam in front of us, taunting us, splashing us, & calling us names the whole way. It was apparent he liked one of us. We knew it was Camille. When we got to the booies, we dangled our feet over the edge, proving we were brave enough to defy the line. Juge did the same, but with his whole body. After a few minutes, he realized that we weren't going to talk to him, he started asking us questions.
We didn't answer.
I could see my friends were getting mad. I didn't want to go back to the beach. I was going to answer Juge.
"C'mon! Let me pop yur cherry-you'll like it, I promise!"
I didn't know what that meant. Time-I needed more time...
"We're not going to talk to you" I said.
"OH! But you are now!"
"Well, go away. We're trying to talk"
"Ok. I'll go away, but tell me your name. I'll only go away if you tell me your name."
And here's the part my mom loves. I replied:
"Flatus, my name's Flatus. Now go away."
Now, being that his REAL name is Juge, I wouldn't have expected him to go away. But he did. I don't know why. I think it was because he didn't exactly know what flatus meant. Kind of like me & the cherry thing. Like, "I know it's dirty, & I'm supposed to know what it is, but I don't"...so he left. As we were leaving the lake that day, he called from the picnic table, "Bye Flatus! See you later!"
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a family favorite. For those of you who don't know:Flatus: noun [Latin: Act of blowing, act of breaking wind. Gas generated in the stomach or bowels]Gives new meaning to the ultimate friendship song: Wind Beneath My Wings, doesn't it?
